


A New Dream

by sultrybutdamaged



Category: Harlots (TV)
Genre: F/F, Found Family, Queer Themes, complex relationships to religion
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-18
Updated: 2020-12-18
Packaged: 2021-03-10 23:00:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,989
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28144992
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sultrybutdamaged/pseuds/sultrybutdamaged
Summary: Perhaps this is what it means to come back from the dead, Amelia thought.  That nothing will ever frighten you again.
Relationships: Amelia Scanwell & Florence Scanwell, Amelia Scanwell & Prince Rasselas, Violet Cross/Amelia Scanwell
Comments: 16
Kudos: 14
Collections: Yuletide 2020





	A New Dream

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Rosemarycat5](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rosemarycat5/gifts).



> Here is my contribution to Yuletide 2020! Thanks to everyone who helped organize this event; it was a lot of fun.
> 
> To Rosemarycat5: I hope you enjoy your gift! This was not actually the fandom we were matched on, but as soon as I saw it on your list, I remembered how much I loved it, and Amelia Scanwell as a character, so thank you for the opportunity to write her.

Silence hung over the room when Justice Hunt - well, he wasn’t a Justice anymore, but calling him Josiah still seemed like a step further than she wanted to take - had finished talking.Amelia steadied her hands on her knees, and stared at the fire, and resolutely did not look at him.

If she did, she would say something angry.Something about her mother, and the struggles former Justice Hunt would never understand, no matter how low he fell in the world, because he was not a woman.It made her a little giddy, all the words that hovered just behind her lips now, words even the sometimes-reckless girl she’d been a few days ago would never have said.This, it seemed, was what came of nearly dying, this sudden eloquence and the bravery that went with it.

But it would be impolite when he was, after all, trying to be kind.

More words surged up, and she bit them back.

“What will you do?” she asked instead.“Now that your career - “

“Is finished?”He gave a soft laugh, wry and tired. 

It cooled some of the anger that had flared up when he stumbled in with his apologies and flowery proposals, too drunk and self-focused to see that he’d driven Violet away.He might be a fool, too harsh in his judgement and erratic in his courage, but he had still done a difficult thing, the right thing, and paid for it.That deserved… Amelia was not sure what, but something.“Is changed,” she corrected gently.“Since you will not have the life you planned, what life will you have instead?”

“I’m not sure,” he admitted. “I’ve never thought of any other life.I suppose it might take me more than a few hours to settle on one.”

“But you are going to be evicted from this house,” she pointed out.He gave her an incredulous look, but Amelia didn’t flinch.Poverty, homelessness, eviction, these were things she was intimately familiar with, and since she couldn’t give him what he now claimed to want - _would_ not give him that, no matter what it made of her - perhaps he would take some advice.

The look didn’t last long; he sighed again.“I suppose I’ll find another career,” he said.“But the law is all I’ve ever known.I’ll have to find something else to do with that knowledge.”

Already, there was a thread of hope in his voice.Amelia could see him gathering himself, shaking off the drag of drunkenness and self-disappointment and rejection.He didn’t need her help after all.He would be fine.Men like him always were.

(Or women like Violet.Violet, who would have you believe she would be absolutely fine on her own, no matter if she was trapped forever in the gutters of Covent Garden or rotting in the house of correction or shipped off to servitude in Virginia, certainly she didn’t need anyone, not the likes of Amelia Scanwell anyway.‘A dalliance,’ she’d said. 

She hadn’t come back since she’d left them alone.Giving them privacy, though Violet had never bothered to do that before.)

“What of you?” Hunt asked, bringing her out of her useless revery.

“What of me?Oh, what shall I do?”Amelia shrugged, her breath catching as even that little movement sent an ache through her belly. _Recover from being stabbed_ , she thought, uncharacteristically irritable.“I will take care of my mother.I will continue our work.As I have always done.”

“Is that all?”He gave her a thoughtful work.“I meant what I said, you know.Given the correct place in society, you could do so much good.You are an unusual soul, Miss Scanwell.”He shook his head at what she was sure was her wary expression.“I am not repeating my proposal.Even if you wished to accept, the truth is, any position I could give you would not be worth the price of a marriage.But I still think you are meant for more than preaching from street corners.What is it you want to do?”

Lucy Wells had asked her a similar question, a week or was it two weeks ago, in the parlor at Greek Street. _What does your Ma want for you_ , she’d asked, and then, _what do you want for yourself?_ Amelia had not been able to answer either question, and it had surprised her.Surely most women her age could answer at least one?Well, she knew the answer to the first, now - “righteous love,” her mother had said, and Amelia knew now, with the conviction that came of survival, that no love she ever found would be righteous in her mother’s eyes, and that wasn’t enough to make her choose something less.And the second? 

There had been a dream, once, but that had been her mother’s too, really, a house of penitence for fallen girls.It felt like a hopelessly naive and foolish dream now, and one undeserving of the girl who’d kissed Violet against that wall over there under the pretext of reading lessons.That girl did not repent of anything except, distantly, guiltily, the pain on her mother’s face. 

“I suppose I want to… to help,” she said.Also naive, but true.All she’d ever wanted was to help, to bring solace to others.Everyone around her, all through her childhood, had preached the same, and it had taken her an absurdly long time to realize that most of them didn’t mean it. “I want to find a way to make a mark.Something that lasts longer than alms or a word of grace.I want to…”Rasselas’s words flickered through her head, reminding her again that no one had said anything about him.“I want to be true to myself,” she said.“Whatever that means.”

“Don’t we all.”Hunt looked away from her, back into the fire, the gloom settling back onto his face.“Don’t we all.”

_No_ , Amelia thought. _I daresay most of you don’t.But I do.I will._

_Do you fear death more, because you are sinners?_ She’d asked that once, but she realized now it was the wrong question. _Do you fear anything at all, when you have faced death and come out the other side?_

She rather thought she didn’t.

__

  


It was three days before she convinced the others to let her leave the house - or rather, before she convinced her mother to leave, in search of fruit at the marketplace, and then got out of bed, dressed as quickly as she could, and slipped out after her.From the doorway of the Justice’s house - it was still his, though she suspected they were rapidly running down the time that would remain so - she could see her mother’s back as she made her way through the crowd, her stick tappingand the crowds parting before her black-clad frame.Amelia felt guilty about the lie, even though it was mild compared to all the lies she’d told her mother, the seemingly harmless jokes with Rasselas or Violet or the girls at Greek Street, the ones that had grown until it seemed that Amelia was two people who could never be reconciled.Compared to that, pretending she wanted fruit was a minor fib.Her mother knew these streets well enough to navigate to the market and back, but it would take her a while to find what she wanted to purchase.She would be gone at least an hour.

Violet had been gone for three days.

No one would say that was the case, but Amelia was no fool.Hunt cooked his own food and cleaned his own dishes and had even brought her a cup of tea the other day on his own.The handful of visitors she’d had over the last few days had seen themselves in, without Violet in her servant’s uniform to usher them through the door with a beleaguered eye roll and a sigh.Amelia had not been able to bring herself to ask her mother about it - that was the one bridge they had not crossed - but she could see it in the tightness on her mother’s face whenever Amelia opened her mouth to speak and her mother misguessed what she would say. 

_Am I just a dalliance_ , she’d asked, and Violet had not answered the question, and had left the room, and had not come back.

Hunt did not seem to be pursuing her.That should be a good thing.But Amelia suspected it also made it very easy for Violet to disappear.

She’d walked the streets of Soho relentlessly for years now, enough that she could do it as blind as her mother, but she miscalculated how much her injury had taken out of her, and by the time she arrived on Nancy Birch’s doorstop she was gasping for breath, her vision blurring with each step.The most terrifying madam in Covent Garden took one look at her and her face softened in a way that might threaten her reputation. 

“You’d better come in,” she said, “though I can’t imagine what someone like you would want in a place like this.”She held open the door and led Amelia througha narrow hall back to the kitchen.There was a small room off the hall, and inside was a man tied up, with his trousers about his ankles and red welts across his back.Amelia pretended she did not see that, a skill she’d become good at deploying at Greek Street.

Nancy smirked anyway as they passed the door.“Business, not another prisoner,” she said.

In the kitchen, she settled Amelia in a chair and bustled about getting tea, dumping a swig of some dark, foul-looking alcohol in it.“Medicinal,” she said.She took a seat across from Amelia, drinking her own “medicine” straight from the bottle.“Now how can I help you?”

Nancy looked tired.No, Amelia thought, she looked like she was grieving.In Greek Street, she’d heard enough to know that Nancy and Margaret Wells had been the oldest of friends; from looks exchanged, subtle shifts in body language, a certain wry understanding that past between Nancy and Mr. North when Margaret was on one of her tirades, she’d suspected more.But there was no way to ask something like that, or to offer the correct condolences for a loss so profound - or if there were, Rasselas and Violet had never taught her those signs and codes - so she only said, “I was hoping Violet might be here.”

“Ah.No.”Nancy cut a look towards the room in the back where Violet had lodged before her arrest, the room where she and Amelia had once spent a long, hazy summer’s day with the curtains drawn tight and a chair blocking the door.“I thought she might come back, when I heard she’d gone from Justice Hunt’s, but I haven’t seen her.”She eyed Amelia over her drink.“He came, though.Looking for her.Didn’t stay once I’d said she wasn’t here.I didn’t get the impression he was too invested in looking further.”

There was a message in Nancy’s tone, something along the lines of _don’t worry_ or _she’s safe,_ which would have been reassuring if it was only Violet’s safety she was worried about. 

“I doubt it,” she agreed.“He has larger problems.”

“Don’t we all.”Nancy gave her another wary look.“This is a long walk you’ve made, just to find out what’s become of Violet.”

She felt herself blush.“Violet is… important to me,” she said.

There was something absurdly gratifying about the shocked understanding that went through Nancy’s eyes.In the year or more she’d spent among the harlots and molly boys, Amelia had grown used to being the one who didn’t know anything, the one who was naive and said foolish things and made others laugh at her innocence.To have put one over on Nancy felt like more of an accomplishment than it should.“I see,” the older woman said.“Well, I’m afraid I can’t give you what you’re looking for.”She paused.“But I do have another guest.One you might wish to see.”

“Oh?”Amelia asked, though having come all this way only to be disappointed, she didn’t think she had the energy for another meeting.She was already afraid she wouldn’t have it in her to make it back before her mother found her missing.And the last time Nancy had brought her a guest, it has been Lord Fallon, bound and gagged, and Amelia had been given the disquieting experience of watching her mother threaten to stab a man’s eyes out.She certainly didn’t have the energy for something like that right now.

“He’s been here just a few days,” Nancy said.“There’s no threat to him any longer, but try convincing - ah, there he is.”Amelia heard the door open and the sound of footsteps in the hallway and when she turned it was Rasselas standing there, white as death and wide-eyed.

“You’re dead,” he said.

Amelia smiled, joy bubbling up unlooked for.“Not quite.”

__

  


It took a long time to convince Rasselas that she was indeed alive, and well (enough), and that she didn’t blame him for running and leaving her on the street.“You were being pursued,” she said when he raised that ridiculous idea.“That isn’t your fault.If you’d stayed, perhaps we’d both be dead.”

He looked like he wanted to argue the point, but Rasselas, she knew, had a strong sense of self-preservation.Like Violet did.Like everyone in Covent Garden, even her own mother, except Amelia Scanwell, who’d almost died twice in less than a year at the hands of the same men and because of her own recklessness.“You took a knife for me.”

She wasn’t sure if that was a question, but she answered it anyway.“I don’t remember,” she said.“It’s a blur.I don’t know if I meant to, or if I just…”She trailed off helplessly. 

She meant only that she didn’t want credit for saving him, but Rasselas gripped her hands, his own almost fever-hot, enough that she would be concerned except that he was smiling.There were tears shining in his eyes.“Still, thank you,” he said.“I cannot ever repay you.”

“Then don’t try,” she said.“Please, I cannot stand it if you always look at me with guilt.It is done.Lord Fallon is dead.We must continue on with our lives.”

He sighed.“And what lives are those?Trading tricks in alleys until the next Lord Fallon comes along to slip a knife between my ribs?”

It was the first he’d ever mentioned dissatisfaction with his lot in life, beyond the poverty.It reminded her of Violet in the Justice’s house the other day, when Amelia had begged her to run away. _I’m earning my freedom_ , she’d said, though Violet had always seemed like the most free person Amelia knew.

“Would you live another way?” she asked.She’d never asked him that, not since the very beginning; with Violet, she’d had to be taught to respect her pride, but with Rasselas… even someone as naive as Amelia had once been had understood that his options were few.There was no Justice Hunt to come tempt him with respectability and protection, no somber bonnet and pious reputation to hide him.They were alike in some ways and very different in others.

Or they had been, anyway.Something had stirred in Amelia now, something that had been growing since the day she’d begged Violet to come away with her and yet, when she looked at it closely, was as much about Rasselas - and about Nancy and Margaret, and poor unhappy Lucy Wells, and yes, even her own mother -as it was about Violet.

He gave her a curious look.“What do you mean?”

“I’ve been thinking,” she said.“My mother and I had a dream, once, of a place where women could come to repent - no, listen.”She grabbed his hands when he started to shake his head, gripping them tightly.“You told me once that love is not a sin, and you were right.I think, perhaps, there are many things that are not sins.At least not if they are done from a place of love or of, of survival.With no intention to harm.”

“Alright.”He tilted his head, wary but listening.“But then - ?”

“A sanctuary.”The idea had been forming in the last few days in fits and starts out of her old dreams, and out of the feelings she’d had plotting in the Greek Street kitchen, a vague longing for something that wasn’t actually the life of a harlot, but was a place in this world of people who would die and kill for each other.Having experienced death almost first-hand, she thought maybe she could do without that part, but something of that camaraderie, that sense that these people who society scorned would go to the ends of the earth for each other - “A place for those with no other place.Where they can leave behind the si - the _choices_ of the past or… or not.Consider them not sins at all.But they can be safe, and secure in the comfort of others.Be protected.”

“A boarding house?” he asked skeptically.“You’d be shut down.You’d be taken for a bawd.Especially with your mother - “

“But that’s just it,” Amelia said.“Do you know how many times I’ve been used, by Margaret Wells, by Lydia Quigley, by my own self, to cast a veil of piety and respectability and _goodness_ over something sordid?It is not a gift I asked for, but it’s apparently one I have.”

She thought he was smiling as he ducked his head.“Piety and respectability are shams, but you _are_ good,” he said softly.“It’s why I trusted you from the first day.”

“You trusted me because I saw you playing the part of a canon of the church and didn’t give you away.”

He laughed; she wasn’t sure she’d ever heard him laugh like that, without a trace of cynicism or fear.“That too.But it isn’t a veil you wear or a disguise.It is the truth.”

“I am no better than anyone else.I lie and mislead.I am a sinner.”She paused.“Just, perhaps not for the reasons I once thought.You taught me that.”

His smile was softer this time.“Well, then, for that I’m glad.” 

“I can use what I am, to do good for others.And I can offer a place for those of us who even in Covent Garden do not fit.But I can’t do it alone.”She smiled into his eyes.“Will you help me, my friend?”

__

It was simpler then it should have been.Amelia chose to think of that as a blessing; she’d been around the world of the harlots long enough to know that it wouldn’t last, but for now she took her luck where she could.

There was a house just around the corner from Greek Street that was for let.Amelia and Rasselas between them had nothing but a few coins to rub together, but a surprising number of people wanted to contribute.Charlotte Wells, who’d taken over her mother’s house, and her sister Lucy, who had a source of income she didn’t not explain but Amelia suspected came from the coffers of the late and unlamented Lord Fallon.Nancy Birch.Emily Lacey, who pressed a purse into her hand on a street corner and muttered “we should have had that bastard,” and then warned her that she’d expect “favors” somewhere down the line.There were others of the more respectable kind, people who were happy to pretend they hadn’t noticed her mother’s past spilled across the pages of the newspapers when they could burnish their own names with contributions to a charitable cause.Amelia took their money willingly, but she knew which of her contributors she would welcome around her table, and it wasn’t them. 

There was an enormous donation from one Lady Isabella, easily twice what everyone else brought her all at once.Charlotte came to deliver the lady’s funds, and when Amelia, who had remained steadfast and confident up until that point, spluttered that she couldn’t accept this, and what could someone from the nobility even _want_ from her, Charlotte gave her a wry smile and a pointed look and said, “There are those of us who understand at all levels of society, Amelia.We’re all just finding happiness in our own ways.”Amelia had only nodded, unsure what that meant and afraid to guess wrongly, but later she’d asked Rasselas, who’d crowed with laughter.

“I’ve heard the rumors about lovely Charlotte and Lady Fitz,” he said, then gave her an unusually serious look.“We do have to help you learn to recognize your own, Amelia.And Violet isn’t here to do it - “He cut himself off.“Sorry.”

“It’s alright.”Violet hadn’t been seen since she left Hunt’s house; it was the one dark shadow cast over months of hard and exhausting but satisfying work.“I do want to learn,” she said.“I want to - to show me.How to be what we are.” 

She couldn’t imagine even a year ago saying it like that, not with shame or fear but with anticipation.With _joy_.

Rasselas laughed, not at her but at her happiness.“No one is quite like you are, Amelia Scanwell,” he said.“But I am happy to be your guide.”

Mr. Hunt helped with the sanctuary as well.His career might be ruined, but his reputation was intact, and he was able to lend a veneer of respectability even her own piety and apparently “ridiculously earnest face,” according to Rasselas, couldn’t match.“It is the least I can do,” is all he said when she visited him in the office he’d set up for his new solicitor’s business so he could sign the papers that would allow her to take the house despite being an unmarried woman with only the income of charitable contributions.“You will do good for these sinners, Miss Scanwell.”

The word didn’t make her flinch as it might have.The day before she’d gone to a tavern, and Rasselas had introduced her to some of his friends, men who’d stood by each other in the face of anything.Amelia had been a begger on a street corner and watched rich men walk by unseeing; she knew what was worse. 

“We will do each other good,” she said, and let Hunt interpret that as he might.

She’d expected her mother to be the biggest obstacle.She’d prayed over it and feared it; she’d imagined how she would have to step away from her mother if she tried to force her into another marriage.But when the time came to explain her new dream, her mother sat silently for a long time, face in repose, and then said, “I have followed you as the guiding light in my darkness for all your life, Amelia.You were my miracle.You saved me from my own lowest days, and then again from cruelty and bitterness.You taught me compassion.If this is what you believe you are meant to do… I don’t understand it.But I will follow you again.”

They moved into the new house at the start of the year.On the day they opened, Amelia moved through the halls, touching walls and bedsteads and tables, looking at the rooms she’d prepared for harlots and mollys and thieves, repentant and unrepentant alike, who needed a place where they could be safe and free.She smiled as she stepped onto the street and surveyed Covent Garden, a place of horror and grace all at once.

_Come home,_ she thought in Violet’s direction. _When you are ready, come home._

  


  



End file.
